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I listened to the whippoorwills’ plaintive ditty, to the quails’ querulous note, to the bob-o-links’ joyous call in the clover fields and thought of the days in the middle of 1830’s when Narcissa Whitman and the dauntless doctor came ferrying across the Missouri to the whitewashed barracks of Fort Leavenworth high on the ledge above the flats. The soldiers must have gasped to see a woman coming as missionary to the back of beyond in this perilous land, where the only white women, up to 1830, dwelt inside fort walls. And the missionary hopes were yet so high, their faith so undiminished by failure, their zeal so unselfish! Hadn’t the Indians asked for missionaries? Didn’t they pray for instruction in the Sacred Book? And the way so far by steamboat had been so easy, warnings as to perils ahead seemed devices of some coward devil. The officers of Leavenworth looked sad; but Narcissa Whitman sang her beautiful hymns and looked at the gorgeous sunsets and smiled. She was divinely happy.

To the everlasting credit of the Daughters of the Revolution be it said, they finally restored the old crenelated wall of the first fort with its slit eyes for rifles to cover and protect ferry and steamboat below. On the flats often a thousand people were in promiscuous encampment—traders, rum runners, missionaries, Overlanders.